Event overview
Fake Democracy, Old News
Liberal democracy has been hollowed out from within and emptied of liberalisms many promises. Meanwhile inequality has increased exponentially, ecological crisis beckons and the often, unaccountable power of elites (in politics, media, finance, corporations etc) increases dramatically. Media that were once assumed to have important democratic responsibilities – as a public sphere, fourth estate, critical watchdog and a check on power – have been commercialised, starved of funding, attacked and restructured – such that they have increasingly been drawn into neoliberal logic. As citizens feel ever more cut adrift from the decisions that make their lives livable so global capital continues to prosper and shape politics. At the same time, the digital age gives us information abundance and unprecedented connectivity. Under these conditions, this talk asks some crucial questions of our time: How can the relationship between media and democracy develop as progressive projects in which truth-telling and communicative capacity emerge from the bottom up and not through paternalistic diktat or pure market exchange? How might this help us to reinvent our democratic futures and search out what democracy could become?
Bio:
Natalie Fenton is a Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths. She is also Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre and of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy. She has published widely on issues relating to news, journalism, civil society, radical politics and new media and is particularly interested in issues of media reform and democracy. She is on the Board of Directors of the campaign group Hacked Off and a founding member of the Media Reform Coalition.
Natalie Fenton's lecture is part of the Goldsmiths MFA Post-Graduate Talks Series.
Series 1.2: The Truth, Again.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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4 Dec 2017 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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